2025 Sam F. Davis Stakes Entries

Sam F. Davis Offers 20, 10, 6, 4 and 2 Kentucky Derby qualifying points

The Sam F. Davis, a mile-and-a-sixteenth race on the main track, is a "Road to the Kentucky Derby" points race. The top five finishers will receive 20, 10, 6, 4 and 2 qualifying points toward securing a spot in the Run for the Roses starting gate on May 3 at Churchill Downs.

A strong performance by local hopeful Naughty Rascal in Saturday's $250,000, mile-and-a-sixteenth Sam F. Davis Stakes for 3-year-olds at Tampa Bay Downs could result in the colt advancing to the track's annual showcase event, the Grade III, $400,000 Lambholm South Tampa Bay Derby on March 8.

That scenario would move his trainer, 80-year-old Oldsmar oval legend Gerald Bennett, one step closer to a cherished dream.

"That (winning the Lambholm South Tampa Bay Derby) is my goal every year," said Bennett, who won eight consecutive Tampa Bay Downs training titles from 2015-16 through 2022-23 and has nine overall, tied with Jamie Ness for the most in track history.

"When you race at Tampa, that's like your Kentucky Derby."

Bennett has saddled 4,182 winners in his 49-year career with Thoroughbreds, which is 13th all-time in North America and first among Canadian-born conditioners. While the majority of his successes have been with allowance and claiming horses, the Springhill, Nova Scotia product won the Grade I Philip H. Iselin Handicap and Grade II Michigan Mile and One-Eighth Handicap with Beau Genius in 1990 and has also trained such notable stakes winners as Secret Romeo, Banker's Jet, Fast Flying Rumor and R Angel Katelyn.

But Bennett has had only two starters in the Tampa Bay Derby. Crimson Knight, whom he owned under his Winning Stables banner in partnership with Raymond Rech, finished second in 2011 as an 86-1 shot, defeated a neck by 43-1 shot Watch Me Go. In 2007, Bennett saddled Michael McQuade's All I Can Get for a fifth-place finish in a Tampa Bay Derby won by subsequent Kentucky Derby champion Street Sense.

The Florida-bred Naughty Rascal is 4-for-6 with a second and a third in his career and owns three stakes victories, including the 7-furlong Pasco Stakes here on Jan. 11 via the disqualification of Owen Almighty for an incident involving another horse. But he has not faced a field with the overall depth of the Sam F. Davis, with Owen Almighty, unbeaten Grade II winner Poster and impressive maiden winner John Hancock prominent in the 10-horse field.

Still, Bennett believes Naughty Rascal possesses the combination of speed, stamina and courage to upset the proverbial applecart and take him to the Lambholm South Tampa Bay Derby in four weeks.

Both the Sam F. Davis Stakes and the Lambholm South Tampa Bay Derby are "Road to the Kentucky Derby" qualifying races, with the first five finishers in each awarded 20, 10, 6, 4 and 2 points.

Bennett will also saddle Life Is Precious, a 4-year-old gelding he owns in partnership with Todd R. Bittiger, in Saturday's $125,000, 6-furlong Pelican Stakes.

"This horse (Naughty Rascal) is what you wait for," said Bennett, who trains the son of Rogueish-Baby Doll, by Smarty Jones, for the partnership of Ron Pugliese's Mr Pug, LLC and Jim Georgeades's J.P.G. 2, LLC. Pugliese and Georgeades purchased Naughty Rascal for $39,000 upon Bennett's recommendation at the 2024 Ocala Breeders' Sales March Sale of Two-Year-Olds in Training.

"He ran well (in the Pasco), but I didn't drill on him too heavy because that wasn't my main objective with him," Bennett observed. "I didn't want to overdo it because you might take a little of his edge off. It's a fine line getting the fitness right, and Edwin (Gonzalez, who will ride Naughty Rascal again Saturday) said he might have gotten a little tired.

"He is getting better each race and he surely hasn't peaked yet. I think he'll get much better going around two turns - that way he can just relax. I think he's coming up to this race just right," Bennett added.

Bennett has run four horses in the Sam F. Davis. His best finish came in 2007 with All I Can Get, who finished second as a 33-1 shot to Any Given Saturday, who would stage a memorable duel four weeks later against Street Sense in a Tampa Bay Derby still talked about frequently in these parts.

As anyone might imagine, Bennett has an endless supply of stories from his long training career, along with a homespun style that keeps listeners highly entertained.

The one race he seems to get asked about most is the 2011 Tampa Bay Derby, in which Crimson Knight came oh-so-close to springing an upset for the ages.

As the nine 3-year-olds prepared to enter the paddock, Bennett found himself standing next to fellow trainer Carl Nafzger, the trainer of 2007 winner Street Sense. "What you got in here?" said Nafzger, hoping his own horse Beamer could improve on a fourth-place finish in the Sam F. Davis Stakes.

"I think I can win this thing," Bennett told Nafzger, gesturing toward Crimson Knight.

Both men took a quick glance at the tote board, which showed Todd Pletcher's colt Brethren the odds-on favorite and Crimson Knight's odds 80-1 and climbing. Nafzger let out a long, low whistle.

A bit earlier, Bennett had told well-known Ocala horseman Harold Queen he thought Crimson Knight would win. "I told Harold I loved my horse. I blew him out 5 furlongs a few days before the race and he went the last quarter-mile in 22 (seconds) and change. It was hard to get him pulled up," Bennett recalled.

Someone has to be the longshot in every race, of course, but Crimson Knight appeared to come by that status honestly. He had won his previous race 16 days earlier as a 5-2 favorite, but that was a claiming race on the turf, a surface his pedigree suggested he was more suited for. Rarely one to pass up an apparent bargain, Bennett had claimed Crimson Knight out of that race for himself and co-owner Rech for $16,000.

Most of the experts were wondering what Bennett was thinking running in a big stakes against horses trained by Pletcher, Nafzger, Chad Brown and Bill Mott; maybe he just wanted to be part of the scene on his 67th birthday.

Under future Hall of Fame jockey Ramon Dominguez, Brethren went to the lead early, with Crimson Knight, who went off 86-1, moving into second place under jockey Ronnie Allen, Jr., with a half-mile remaining in the mile-and-a-sixteenth race. Beamer was near the back, while another Tampa Bay Downs-based horse, trainer Kathleen O'Connell's Florida-bred Watch Me Go, appeared to be traveling well in third under Luis Garcia.

Then, as the field straightened out for home, Brethren began to tire and Crimson Knight passed him as the crowd of 10,755 grew eerily silent, except for those holding tickets on the new leader. Allen, who had won the Tampa Bay Derby 18 years earlier on Marco Bay, seemed to be destined for his first career graded-stakes victory.

But Garcia had timed Watch Me Go's move perfectly. A 43-1 shot himself, Watch Me Go surged past Crimson Knight in the shadow of the wire, posting a neck victory and earning O'Connell a trip to the Kentucky Derby (where Watch Me Go finished 18th). Brethren finished 3 ¼ lengths back in third, with Beamer fourth.

"I congratulated Kathy in the winner's circle, but she was so excited I don't think she heard me," Bennett said recently.

Crimson Knight raced until he was 7, winning five more times with two stakes placings, but that memorable March day 14 years ago was his crowning achievement (the last time Bennett checked, the 17-year-old was living comfortably on a farm in Georgia).

Bennett feels especially blessed to be on the doorstep of another Lambholm South Tampa Bay Derby opportunity. For a while last fall, he was unsure whether he would be able to participate in the current meet.

Late last summer, he was hospitalized for more than a week after undergoing surgery to remove four benign tumors from his colon and have a colostomy bag attached. His assistant, Juan Cacho Castro, ran the stable, with help from Bennett's wife Mary and the conditioner's numerous employees.

"The tumors were causing him so much pain - one of them was as big as my hand," Mary said.

That wasn't the end of his health issues. In September, he began chemotherapy treatments to treat cancer in his colon, liver and a lung. That regimen was halted last month when he underwent surgery to remove tumors from his bladder; they were benign but the blockage was causing him excruciating discomfort. He had to wear a catheter for five weeks, which made getting sleep extremely difficult - not that Bennett got his recommended amount previously.

Through his ordeals, his horses have still come first. "Even when he was lying in bed in all that pain, he'd say he had to check his phone messages," Mary said. "He always has the horses in his mind. That's what keeps him going.

"They are his life. A lot of people, they say they have a sixth sense about a horse. I think Gerry has a seventh sense. He can just look in a horse's eye and get the vibrations."

Pugliese and Georgeades, who have campaigned a few dozen horses with Bennett over the last nine or 10 years and become close to him and Mary, have listened to offers for Naughty Rascal as the wins accumulate. The colt has earned $220,630, so in a sense they are playing with house money.

Considering their friendship with Bennett and what this horse means to him, it would clearly take a whole lot of money to get them to think about selling.

"At the moment, we're gambling," Pugliese said, chuckling. "But if you're running a 2 or 3-year-old colt at this point, you don't take the money off the table. You're rolling the dice. ... if you win the Sam F. Davis, you might have a million-dollar horse. And if you run up the track in the Davis, what you have is probably a $50,000 horse."

All three men are in the business to make money, but Bennett's inspirational courage seems to bond them tighter each day, with each other and through their horse.

"I don't know if there is a tougher person on the backside of the racetrack," said Pugliese. "The day after his surgery, I called to check on him and I said `It sounds noisy. Where are you?' He said he was at the (starting) gate with a horse. It's amazing to me that he could be out here at 5 a.m. the next day, working horses."

Pugliese and Georgeades accompanied Bennett on a recent trip to Solera Farm in Williston, outside of Ocala, to visit Naughty Rascal's father Rogueish and look at horses. When they went to a restaurant after their trip, Bennett "ate like a prisoner going to his execution the next morning," Georgeades put it.

"For a while we were worried about him because he was getting more frail, but he is coming back strong. You can see it in him," Georgeades said. "But even when he gets tired and you start worrying about him, you just grit your teeth and bear with it, because you know how much this means to him.

"We're not going nowhere. We're going down with the ship," Georgeades said, laughing. "This is one of the biggest challenges he has had. But if this horse turns out to be even better than what we think he is, the (Lambholm South Tampa Bay Derby) will be his next challenge.

"That is why we're here with him - to get that far."

That's not to say they haven't been tempted by a few six-figure offers they have received to sell the colt, whose stakes victories have come on dirt and turf, both sprinting and going around two turns. For now, though, money is secondary to the thrill of the experience they're sharing.

The Bennetts are grateful to the doctors whose care has made it possible for him to stay at the track, and they are deeply appreciative of Castro and the barn crew's efforts. And even Bennett, no sentimentalist, chokes up when he thinks of the concern and support he has received from members of the Oldsmar backstretch community.

But like his owners, Bennett isn't going nowhere, either. To him, the terms "trainer" and "caretaker" have always been synonymous.

"Nobody I know takes care of horses better than he does," said Georgeades.

Bennett loves dealing with such A.I. - Animal Intelligence.

"With me, it doesn't matter whether it's a really good horse or a claiming horse, a win is a win," Bennett said. "When you're a trainer, you're just striving to win races.

"But this horse. ... getting one like him, no matter your age or how long you've been in the business, it's what keeps you getting up early every morning. You have new people calling, they put pressure on you, maybe you should sell. ... well, you know how fragile the horse business is."

He paused, fixing Naughty Rascal with a probing look.

"But you get very few chances to get to the Derby, and how many people spend millions of dollars to get there and be there that day?" he said. "So you either make up your mind you're going for it, or not."

He was talking about the other Derby now, the one on the first Saturday in May under the Twin Spires.

Hey, even 80-year-old guys can dream big.

Undefated Poster Probable for 45th Sam F. Davis

Feb 2 - After turning in an impressive 5-furlong breeze this morning on the Tampa Bay Downs main track, unbeaten 3-year-old colt Poster appears headed to Saturday's $250,000 Sam F. Davis Stakes, the centerpiece of the Oldsmar oval's Festival Preview Day.

Poster, whose workout time of 1:01 3/5 was best today of 20 horses at the distance, is one of 10 horses currently considered likely to compete in the 45th running of the mile-and-a-sixteenth race, which awards Kentucky Derby qualifying points to the top five finishers on a 20-10-6-4-2 scale. Owned by his breeder, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum's Godolphin operation, Poster is trained by Eoin Harty.

A son of Munnings out of Pin Up, by Tapit, Poster concluded his 2-year-old campaign on Dec. 7 in the Grade II, mile-and-an-eighth Remsen Stakes at Aqueduct under jockey Flavien Prat with a nose victory from Aviator Gui. Poster's first two victories came on the turf at Ellis Park and Keeneland.

The Sam F. Davis is one of four main track stakes races on the Festival Preview Day card. Three-year-old fillies will take the spotlight in the $150,000, mile-and-40-yard Suncoast Stakes, which awards Kentucky Oaks qualifying points to the top five finishers. The Godolphin-Harty duo is expected to have a top contender in homebred Deloraine, who won a turf allowance/optional claiming race here on Dec. 13 by 8 ¼ lengths.

Tracy Farmer's homebred filly La Cara, a Grade III winner trained by Mark Casse who finished fifth in the Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies on Nov. 1 at Del Mar, is also expected for the Suncoast, along with Grade III-placed Italian Soiree, trained by John P. Terranova, II, and Dancing Magic, who won the Gasparilla Stakes here on Jan. 11 for owner Mellon Patch and trainer Michael Campbell.

Stakes winner Her Laugh, trained by D. Whitworth Beckman, is a Suncoast possible.

Saturday's menu of stakes offerings also includes the $125,000, 6-furlong Pelican Stakes for horses 4-years-old-and-upward and the $100,000, 6-furlong Minaret Stakes for fillies and mares 4-and-upward.

Most of the national attention will be squarely focused on the Sam F. Davis, which is the major prep race for the Grade III, $400,000 Lambholm South Tampa Bay Derby on March 8.

The Sam F. Davis is also expected to attract Oldsmar trainer Gerald Bennett's Naughty Rascal, a three-time stakes winner owned by Mr Pug and J.P.G. 2 who won the Pasco Stakes here on Jan. 11 via disqualification, and Flying Dutchmen Breeding and Racing's Owen Almighty, trainer Brian Lynch's colt who was dropped from first to fifth in the Pasco by the stewards for a bumping incident on the far turn.

Naughty Rascal breezed 5 furlongs here on Thursday in a sharp 1:00 1/5, while Owen Almighty breezed 5 furlongs in a minute flat on Saturday at the Palm Meadows Training Center in Boynton Beach.

Among the other Sam F. Davis probables are Calumet Farm's colt Very Bold, the official second-place finisher in the Pasco, who is trained by Harty; John Hancock, who broke his maiden here under jockey Samy Camacho on Jan. 8 sprinting 6 furlongs for owners WinStar Farm, CHC, Inc., and Siena Farm and trainer Brad Cox; and Smoken Boy, winner of the Grade I Clasico Agustin Mercado Reveron Stakes on Dec. 8 on a muddy track at Camarero in Puerto Rico, for owner Sonata Stable and trainer Jose Francisco D'Angelo.

Also expected as of today are Treaty of Rome, a stakes-placed Chad Brown-trained colt owned by Mrs. John Magnier, Michael Tabor and Derrick Smith; Dr Ruben M, a well-bred son of Vino Rosso owned by The Del Mar Group and trained by Doug O'Neill; Camp Hale, second in all three starts for breeder-owner Whitham Thoroughbreds and trainer Ian Wilkes; and Gateskeeper, owned by Gervais Racing and trained by S. Jade Cunningham.

2025 SAM F. DAVIS STAKES DRAWS 35 NOMINEES

Jan 29 - The mile-and-a-sixteenth Sam F. Davis Stakes, which awards points to the top five finishers toward qualifying for the Kentucky Derby on May 3 at Churchill Downs, is one of four stakes scheduled on a quality-laden Festival Preview Day 45 card.

The other Feb. 8 stakes are the 45th running of the $150,000, mile-and-40-yard Suncoast Stakes for 3-year-old fillies, which awards points to the top five toward qualifying for the May 2 Kentucky Oaks; the 41st edition of the $125,000, 6-furlong Pelican Stakes for horses 4-years-old-and-upward; and the 44th running of the $100,000, 6-furlong Minaret Stakes for fillies and mares 4-and-upward.

The Suncoast has attracted 31 nominations, while the Pelican and Minaret drew 19 and 18, respectively. The Pelican nominees include Grade I winner Book'em Danno, a 4-year-old gelding owned by Atlantic Six Racing and trained by Derek Ryan who won last year's Pasco Stakes by 12 ½ lengths to launch a magical campaign for the New Jersey-bred.

Naughty Rascal, who was elevated to victory in the 7-furlong Pasco on Jan. 11 upon the disqualification of Owen Almighty to fifth place for interfering with Rookie Card on the turn, is 4-for-6 with a second and a third for owners Mr Pug, LLC and J.P.G. 2, LLC and trainer Gerald Bennett. He has won races on the dirt and turf at distances ranging from 5 furlongs to a mile.

Disco Time is a perfect 3-for-3, beginning his 3-year-old campaign on Jan. 18 at Fair Grounds in New Orleans with a thrilling come-from-behind victory in the Grade III Lecomte Stakes on a sloppy track. He is owned by his breeder Juddmonte and trained by Brad Cox, who has nominated six horses to the Sam F. Davis.

Another strong nominee is the Godolphin-bred-and-owned Poster, an Eoin Harty-trainee who improved to 3-for-3 on Dec. 7 at Aqueduct with a victory in the Grade II, mile-and-an-eighth Remsen Stakes. That was his first start on the dirt after two turf victories.

Grande, who is owned by Repole Stable and trained by Todd Pletcher, kicked off his career with a 1-mile triumph at Gulfstream on Jan. 11. He is one of three horses nominated to the race from the barn of Pletcher, who has won the Sam F. Davis a record seven times.

Owen Almighty, owned by Flying Dutchmen Breeding and Racing, LLC and trained by Brian Lynch, lost little luster despite his Pasco setback after powering past Naughty Rascal late. Already a stakes winner, he finished second in the Grade III, 1-mile Iroquois Stakes as a 2-year-old in September at Churchill Downs.

Other top Sam F. Davis nominees include Aviator Gui, owned by his breeder Three Chimneys Farm and trained by Chad Brown, who was second by a nose to Poster in the Remsen; First Resort, another Godolphin homebred trained by Harty who concluded his 2-year-old campaign on Nov. 30 with a victory in the Grade II Kentucky Jockey Club Stakes at Churchill; and Guns Loaded, who won the Mucho Macho Man Stakes on Jan. 4 at Gulfstream for owners Morplay Racing, Joey Platts and Lady Sheila Stable and trainer Jose Francisco D'Angelo (Morplay and D'Angelo teamed to win last year's Sam F. Davis with No More Time).

Needless to say, when a race offers a quarter-million in purse money plus 20, 10, 6, 4 and 2 Kentucky Derby qualifying points, there will be no shortage of accomplished nominees, especially since there was no cost to nominate (there is a supplementary fee of $3,000 for late nominations).

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